Making Millions By Investing in Bitcoin, Ethereum and Altcoins (Hacking Investing)

Show where I teach you how to make six figures in your 20s, yeah your 20s Who said making six figures has to wait until your old and grumpy? In today's show, we're gonna talk about something that's about to blow up, and I mean blow up We're here on the diamond field playing baseball, well, not really, but today's show, I'm gonna show you you can possibly, possibly, hit a home-run investing in something that's on the up and up Today's show will cover Bitcoin, Ethereum and cryptocurrencies and how they could possibly make you a millionaire In your 20s? Let's get into it

(hip hop music) Hey, what up, world It's your boy, the made man Welcome to Hacking the System The show where I teach you how to make six figures by any means necessary while you're still young Create the lifestyle of your dreams and hustle to greatness

All right, so in today's show talking about Bitcoin, Ethereum, altcoins, cryptocurrencies in general and how they could possibly make you a millionaire I know that may seem like an exaggeration, because I'm definitely not a millionaire, but the potential is there So if the potential is there and you're out there trying to chase the money like us, right? We gotta go break it down and show how we could possibly do it So let's start things off with a story All right, there was this guy who was doing his thesis in graduate school on cryptography

So he got intrigued by Bitcoin and blockchains in general All right, for those who don't know, blockchain is the technology underlying Bitcoin and that makes it work All right, it basically leverages cryptography So he'd gotten really, really intrigued with this And he just tossed his money on the side and bought some Bitcoin

He bought $27 wort of Bitcoin That was sometime back, right Fast forward three years later, three years later, he completely forgot about his investment He forgot about his $27 investment So three years later, Bitcoin is basically in the news, it's blowing up

It's trending, it's peaking He's like, yo, I bought some Bitcoin a while back, let me check up on it All right, so he goes to check his Bitcoin wallet to see how much money he has and in three years, in three years, it went from being worth $27 to $886,000 Yeah, almost $1 million in three years His $27 because Bitcoin went from being worth pennies on the dollar to right now being worth over $1,200 for one Bitcoin

All right, so Bitcoin is blowing up, baby All right, so don't miss this boat If you missed it, I'll show how you can definitely leverage it and other cryptocurrencies All right, so why is there lots and lots of hype around Bitcoin, Ethereum, and cryptocurrencies in general? Well, Bitcoin was the best performing currency in 2016 It surpassed gold and any other body out there like dollar, yen, whatever, right? It was the best performing currency

Just think about that for a second How many currencies do we have out there in the world? The world is humongous, all right? But Bitcoin was the best performing currency in 2016 It went up 120% in 2016 Basically meaning that it more than doubled the money if you had bought Bitcoin in 2016 Then on the other hand, Ethereum is blowing up as well

Actually, blowing up a lot more than Bitcoin itself I got involved in this whole cryptocurrency game sometime around November, December last year in 2016 And I was like, you know what, this seems kind of trendy 'cause my friend told me about it So I tossed some money at it And I recall that Ethereum at that point around November, December was only worth $10

Fast forward to February, March, Ethereum is at $40 So it quadrupled in value in about three months All right, so my best trade to date, my best investment to date in terms of cryptocurrencies is actually Ethereum I put in about $2,500 in it And about three months, in basically a month or so actually 'cause last couple months have been kind of stagnating

But in basically a month, I doubled my money From 2,500 to over $5,000 All right, so all these currencies are trending because they're blowing up, they're getting attention They aren't mainstream yet, so right there's still definitely time to catch the gold rush 'Cause this right here is a gold rush, baby

All right, so to start things off, we'll first talk about what is Bitcoin, what is Ethereum, and what are altcoins and cryptocurrencies in general? All right, what is Bitcoin? To keep things simple, Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency Right, so similar to how we have cash, we have the dollar, or what have you, right, we have different currencies The dollar, the yen, right, Bitcoin is a digital currency But what makes it different, though is it's decentralized There is no central authority

There is no bank, there is no government that controls it It's peer to peer So similar to how Bitcoin operates, right, if you ever download anything from Bit Torrent to way back in the day with Napster, right, Napster and the whole time with the illegal pirating craze, everything was peer to peer Right, because of that, there is no central point of failure when it comes to Bitcoin All right, imagine having different people across the world being able to talk with each other and send money without having to depend on a bank, on the government, right, there is no middle man

Everything is peer to peer You're directly talking with the other person and making a transaction This happens because of such technology called blockchain This basically leverages cryptography Meaning that it makes it so that you cannot really hack it, per se, right, so nobody can really spy on it

It's very, very secure, right So me and you can make a transaction without having to go to the bank And because of that, there is no middle man Freeing us Then on the other hand, we have a different currency and platform called Ethereum

Right, this is kind of the second biggest currency or platform out there Ethereum is a decentralized distributed computing platform What does that mean? So think of that as basically using peer to peer virtual computing That's kind of the best analogy I can think of So think of Ethereum as a platform that allows you to be applications, that allows you to build peer to peer applications

So think of build supercomputer that is decentralized, there is no central computer Everything's peer to to peer So imagine everybody around the world pulling their computer powers together to make one supercomputer, one platform that you can run different applications on and these applications are called smart contracts So what does that exactly mean? So Ethereum you could have not just currencies, right, 'cause currency for Ethereum is called Ether, but you can have smart contracts for thing such as trading coffee, for trading wheat Anything of value between two parties and they want to transact with each other, they can doing that on this platform called Ethereum

And one of those ways is Ether, which is the currency All right, what are altcoins? For anything out there that's not Bitcoin in terms of the cryptocurrency world is referred to as an altcoin Short for alternative coins All right so why do Bitcoin, Ethereum, and cryptocurrencies in general really matter? What makes them valuable? The first point is they're centralized I keep stressing that because it means that there is no central single point of failure

The government can't come out there and control it There is no one central authority or body that controls it Meaning that everybody can do what they want whenever they want It's kind of like the wild, wild west All right, so, which is both good and bad, right? Because good in the sense that countries out there that have oppression or different people that can seize their bank accounts don't really have to bother with that, because Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general give them independence from that

Because there is no one one single point of failure, nobody can shut it down The government can't come in here and say, you know what, we don't like how you're transacting business, let's shut this down Perfect example is Bitcoin back in the day, back in the heyday, got popular because people were using it on a platform called Silk Road All right, it could transact and buy illegal goods on this platform, which is basically the Dark Web the Dark Net They could buy illegal goods with it, and not really leave any trace, because the government couldn't track it

So that's how Bitcoin can I have kind of got its initial growth But the government came and shut down the Dark Web for Silk Rroad, but it couldn't shut down Bitcoin, because Bitcoin has no central authority It's peer to peer So imagine kind of like bitron, if you take down one computer, you can't shut down the entire network This becomes important because you own Bitcoin

It's not owned by the bank, your country, the government or a different authority You own it It is yours As a result, nobody can seize it from you unless you lose your wallet, which we won't cover today, but, so for example, back in I think around 2013 or so, there was the whole economy bailouts, countries were collapsing, and Cypress was one of those countries Cypress, the government Cypress, as a way to bail out the country and try to reestablish a reboost to the economy, they went after and they wanted to seize assets in people's bank accounts Just think about that for a second

The government wanted to go to people's bank accounts, take out their money and redistribute that money out there As a way to revitalize the economy So people got scared, man, they got really, really scared And that's when Bitcoin began to grow So they took money from their bank accounts because they knew the government could come and seize those assets

And they put that almost away like an off-shore account They used Bitcoin as a way to hide the money from the government, or store the money in, not really hide it but protect their money from the government and other third parties who would try to seize that money Bitcoin also matters in the sense that it's similar to gold All right, in the sense that it's scarce, it's rare All right, 'cause as opposed to fiat currencies like the dollar and all these other paper currencies that are no longer tied to the gold standard, they lose value by the minute, by the day

All right, every time you print out more fiat currency, more paper money to boost the economy, all right, it's losing value because it's basically almost infinite With Bitcoin is similar to gold in the sense that they're only 21 million Bitcoins out there that could be ever be mined As a result, it's scarce, giving it value Another selling point for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies is that they're global and borderless with low transaction fees Meaning that me right here in America, I can send money to anybody around the world very, very quickly, all right, faster than sending money with other platforms like Western Union

On top of that, they have lower transaction fees So, for example, Bitcoins could be used as a replacement for Western Union and sending money abroad to help out family members or other friends Because the transaction fees are very, very low And money can be very instant Because right now with the current banking system, it's very hard to send like, for example, a $1 million out there across the world

It's actually easier, a lot easier, to get on a plane with a suitcase of money and transfer that money because money usually takes about three to five business days, sometimes even longer, depending where you are All right, with Bitcoin, it can take anywhere from 10 minutes to half an hour All right, so it's very, very fast to send large amounts of money, and very, very low transaction fees All right, cause when I send money to somebody via Bitcoin, there actually is no transaction fee There's only a transaction fee when you try to take the money out, and that fee is very low

And one of the main ways that makes Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and Ethereum and all such matter is they help store value So earlier I mentioned how in Cypress, people who were afraid of the government seizing their assets were able to store the value of their money in Bitcoin So, for example, the same thing is happening in China right now as we speak, 'cause China is communist country And people, Chinese are in droves in terms of the rich Chinese, they're sending their money to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and these other cryptocurrencies as a way to store the value from either unstable currencies or from the government So, for example, if you have a currency kind of like down in South America and Argentina, right, they're using Bitcoin to store the value 'cause their currency fluctuates up and down to a point where they can't really, they have no idea where their currency stands at any given point in time, 'cause it's so volatile

So they use Bitcoin as a way to store the value All right, so how can Bitcoin and all these other cryptocurrencies make you a millionaire? First thing I'll say is, I'm definitely not a financial advisor This is infotainment Right, but I myself am actually invested in all these cryptocurrencies, right, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and some more altcoins But in general, right, so back in 2011, if you invested $100 in Bitcoin, at this current point in time in 2017, your $100 investment would be valued at almost $400,000

Just think about that for a second $100 to 400 grand in basically six years Like, imagine if you put a lot more into it Because me right now, I have over 10 grand in it All right, so I'm definitely playing the long game

I'm definitely going for that home run, right? I'm trying to swing outside the fence So Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is basically a way to speculate on the future in terms of the economy, the world economy, currencies, because right now if you get in early, you could possibly make a killing in it And, as I mentioned earlier, reason being is other currencies out there are losing value, which is why Bitcoin was the best performing currency of last year in 2016 All right, so fiat currencies lost a lot of value in the sense that they're no longer backed by the gold standard Meaning that for every $1, for example, it's tied to one equal dollar worth of gold

'Cause back in the early, I think like the, in the 20th century, right? If you took your money, you could exchange that for gold in its equal form But at this point in time, it's no longer backed by gold As a result, it gave the government of America and other countries the ability to print as much money as they like Print as much paper money as they like, 'cause it was no longer tied to gold So they could just go out there and print a $1 billion and not have $1 billion worth of gold to back that up

As a result, the value decreased And so, in general, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are getting lots and lots of attention because big companies now are paying attention to them They're backing them So, for example, my employer, IBM is going in on blockchain, the technology, the underlying technology that makes Bitcoin and all these other cryptocurrencies possible They started a high pillager foundation, which is basically a blockchain foundation

And then recently this year, JP Morgan and Microsoft founded their own Ethereum foundation That's why Ethereum blew up in the last three months or so and went up from $10 to $40, because big companies are paying attention and giving this that stamp of approval So anybody out there who's kind of hesitant to take a look at these cryptocurrencies or check them out, if Microsoft, IBM, JP Morgan are willing to take a gamble on these currencies, maybe you should too as well Right, maybe you should also take a chance, a gamble, a fly on them Because this could be your million-dollar move

Another point I'll make is, Bitcoin could be a possible replacement for gold Yeah, gold 'Cause recently, Bitcoin is now worth, one Bitcoin is worth more than one ounce of gold One ounce of gold is worth, is worth less than one Bitcoin So Bitcoin could be a possible replacement to store value as opposed to storing it in gold

So if you have a bunch of money, right, and you want to store it in something else besides gold, silver, you could store it in Bitcoin Which is what the the Chinese are doing, and other people in unstable economies with unstable currencies, they're using these cryptocurrencies as way to store value All right, so you're saying, hey, Ian, yeah got me hyped, super hyped, I'm definitely down to invest some money on cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, what have you, where do I start? How do I start? So the first step to start, especially if you're a beginner, is a site called Coin Base This makes it very, very easy for anybody out there to buy and sell cryptocurrencies This was meant for beginners

All right, so if you go to coinbasecom and create an account, you can verify your account, tie it up, link it up to your bank account and buy money, and buy crypto, and buy basically Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin Those are the three currencies they have on there The three cryptocurrencies they have You can purchase them either with your bank, with your debit card and tie it to your bank account, or a credit card even

All right, but one thing about Coin Base, though, is it has higher transaction fees than normal Bitcoin or cryptocurrency sites 'cause it's meant for newbies But with that being said, though, it's very, very user friendly It's how I began my journey in cryptocurrencies, and it's a great place to start Now, one thing to note is if you actually go on my website and sign up using my link, right, you and I will both get $10 worth of Bitcoin cryptocurrencies in terms of Bitcoin, Litecoin, what have you, to invest, if you invest $100 All right, so let me say that again

So if you want to start and you want to put $100 into it, Coin Base as a way to kind of entice you to learn the system and get more involved, they'll give you $10 as well But to do that, you have to sign up using my affiliate link, all right So if you sign up using my link, my affiliate link, you and I both get $10 What a deal, right? All right, so let's say you aren't really a beginner, and maybe you've done investing before and you don't want something that's super easy Maybe you want to day trade, for example

All right, two good platforms for day trading are GDAX, which is an exchange owned by Coin Base It's kind of for more advanced people And also Gemini These two are basically exchanges that let you day trade cryptocurrencies And mainly just the popular ones like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin

All right, so if you want to day trade, you can use those platforms They're better than Coin Base in the sense that you have a lot more control You can do things such as stop limit orders They also have fewer transaction fees Much, much, lower transaction fees

But it's kind of more complex You have to have some kind of experience investing So I would recommends using something like Coin Base to start Using that as training wheels Then go on GDAX or Gemini and use that as a way to kind of once you've mastered or gotten the handle on things to start doing a lot more complicated things, more complex things

Now, so we've talked about Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the main two currencies out there, the two main cryptocurrencies, but there are over 100 cryptocurrencies out there, over 100 And new currencies are coming up every single day And actually I think it's a lot more profitable to find the smaller currencies because they have a lot more growth potential 'Cause Bitcoin has gone from being worth pennies to being worth $1,200 So in terms of growth potential, it could go to 2,000

It could go to $10,000 Even $5,000, but it's gonna get there a lot slower than these currencies right now that are in the pennies on the dollar All right, so think of altcoins, alternative coins as similar to trading penny stocks All right so for those who have done investing before, penny stocks are basically stocks worth under $1 or so Right, almost pen as, that you can buy very, very cheap, and if they go up, they can double just like that

All right, so for example, recently, I doubled my money with Ripple, which is a cryptocurrency as well, but this is used more for banking 'Cause it was worth very, very, it was worth in the pennies on the dollar And when they go up two pennies, maybe if it's 50 cents it goes to $1 You can double your money like that So in general if you want to trade altcoins, the exchange I use is called Poloniex

Don't know how to pronounce it I just call it Polo for short, right? (laughs) But if you go to Poloniex, Polo, right, they have tons and tons of cryptocurrencies out there, tons of them From Stratis to Ripple to Decred, right, not every currency, but the popular ones out there that you want to invest in and leverage and make profit on are available on Polo All right, as opposed to going to Coin Base, GDAX, and Gemini because they only cater to the top three currencies, the top three cryptocurrencies Everything else, the altcoins, I would go to Polo and find them there, all right? But one thing to notice, Polo won't let you buy anything without fiat money

So you can't buy with dollars It's only an exchange, you can only exchange money And their standard universal currency is Bitcoin So why I do is I buy my money, I mean, I get my bank account and buy Bitcoin or Ethereum, but generally Bitcoin because it's a lot easier to work with I buy Bitcoin on GDAX, then I transfer that to my Bitcoin wallet on Polo, and I use that to trade and make day trades and moving in and out of different currencies

Then once you're done, you cash out from that currency converting back to Bitcoin Then from Bitcoin, you're sending that Bitcoin back to GDAX, and you cash out So, it's kind of complex, it's kind of a round about way of doing thing It definitely adds a barrier of entry, but that barrier of entry makes is a lot profitable to make money, 'cause not everybody's making money with it Right, but sometimes you don't even have to cash out

All right, so, for example, recently I sold a portion of my investment to transfer that money to a off-shore bookie so I could gamble on March Madness with Bitcoin And the casino, the online broker, I mean the online bookie accepts Bitcoin, which was pretty cool, right, 'cause a lot faster to send my Bitcoin from Polo or GDAX as as opposed to calling them or tying my credit card to that It kind of give me that, it makes it fluid And it's kind of anonymous, kind of anonymous I say that because all these exchanges nowadays force you to verify your account, your information in terms of your bank account, our I

D, where you live, all that All right, so it's not truly anonymous But if you were dealing with just anybody out there, peer to peer, you can be anonymous 'Cause that's what cryptocurrencies left you achieve

All right, so I gave you guys a lot of game If you want to do anyway further study or research on cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and altcoins, a good place to start that I recommend is to check out a book called Digital Gold This is one of the best books I've read on Bitcoin And it basically walks you through the starting of Bitcoin from the founder, all right, in Japan, all the way through the history of the major key players and the history of Bitcoin and how it grew And it also shares the story and talks about how people became millionaire with Bitcoin

All right, so it's a very, very great story Check out the book, Digital Gold I'll have the link available on my website and I also put it in the video as well All right, I've given you guys a lot of game, I mean a ton of game All right, and you guys, I've showed you how it's possible to go out there and possibly become a millionaire

All right, just to kind of be candid with you guys, I myself I right now have about $10,500 invested in cryptocurrencies Right, and I began investing around end of November, early December, or so And I didn't start early I didn't just go out there and put in 10 grand, right, I began small So I first begun things off with $100 in Bitcoin and $100 in Ethereum

So I took a flier on it I was like, here, you know what, let me just throw 200 bucks at it and see what happens And I noticed, hey, I'm up about 25% in a month Not bad, right? So I put about 250 more dollars each in both Ethereum and Bitcoin again to see how things were going Then I noticed, I was like hey, you know what? I just doubled my money because Ethereum went from $10 to $20 in about 2 months

I'm like not bad, right? Then I saw Ethereum was taking off, I came back, put in $2,500 in Ethereum, and $2,500 in Bitcoin And Ethereum doubled in about a month and a half My $2,500 went from being $2,500 to over five grand To a point I actually sold that off at about $5,500 bucks So I more than doubled my money in a bit a month and a half

Then from there I had to kind of learn the ropes I then moved from money from GDAX to Polo Because with Polo could do a lot more day trading, a lot more trading with altcoins All right, so right now, my portfolio, because I don't want to seem like I'm making money like that, because I ain't got it like that, but the potential is there My initial investment of 10,500 is now worth about $13,000 give or take

All right, some profits, some losses, right, but that's been in about three months or so, so it's not bad But right now, the last couple months growth has slowed down, mainly being because Bitcoin is going through a major scalability issue I don't know if you guys have heard about this You can do your own research on this It's too in-depth for this video

This is meant for beginners But Bitcoin is thinking about doing a split Basically splitting the currency and doing a hard fork Something called Segwit and Bitcoin Unlimited So once this whole debate has been resolved, then Bitcoin I think is gonna take off and continue to take off

Because right now it's been kind of stagnant So that being said, I've given you guys a lot of game Go out there and check it out Let me know what you guys think I'll be dropping a end of blog post on my website explaining a lot more about how to possibly become a millionaire with Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general

With that being said, though, I am definitely, definitely not a financial advisors, right, this is not financial advice This is infotainment Invest at your own risk, at your own peril But with that being said, though, let's get this money Peace

All right, it's a wrap Thanks for checking out the show Make sure to give it like Subscribe and drop a comment and review Check out my website where I drop game every single week

Check me out on social media, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat Let's go out there, make this money Hustle to greatness

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